Thursday, November 23, 2006

"On numerous occasions here, I have linked to Philip Zelikow’s remark that the Iraq “war” was launched in the name of Israel’s security, not because Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States, as our unitary decider and his minions have declared ad nauseam since the invasion.

”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel,” said Zelikow, the Bush political hack who worked for the NSC, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the September 11th whitewash commission, and the CIA, the latter as an official exonerator of politicized intelligence while at Harvard. Naturally, the corporate media did not bother to mention Zelikow’s remark about the invasion. In fact, when people say such things, they are usually considered antisemites.

Back in 2004, senator Ernest Hollings acknowledged the U.S. invaded Iraq “to secure Israel,” and “everybody” knows it. Hollings went so far as to finger the culprits behind the invasion—Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, and Charles Krauthammer, professional war propagandist—but scant few took notice. It didn’t take long for the Anti-Defamation League to characterize Hollings’ comments as “anti-Jewish stereotyping… tantamount to scapegoating” and “ethnic hatred,” in other words antisemitism. “Regardless of whether one feels that America’s war on Iraq was justified, the charge that it is being fought by the U.S. on behalf of Israel grossly misrepresents the legitimate U.S. interests that are involved in the debate,” said Abe Foxman.

Enter Ehud Olmert, Israeli PM.

“I know all of his (Bush’s) policies are controversial in America. There are some who support his policies in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, and some who do not,” Olmert said yesterday in Jerusalem. “I stand with the president because I know that Iraq without Saddam Hussein is so much better for the security and safety of Israel, and all of the neighbors of Israel without any significance to us…. Thank God for the power and the determination and leadership manifested by President Bush.”

No word if Abe Foxman took back his slander of Ernest Hollings.

Bush and the neocons invaded Iraq not for the security of the United States, but for the security of Israel, as many of us have argued for at least three years. Of course, the invasion was not sold that way. It was sold as a preemptive move to excise an impending threat against the American people. It was sold, after it was demonstrated Iraq posed no threat to the United States, as a munificent bequest of democracy upon the oppressed, never mind the average Iraq was not asked if he or she wanted it.

Naturally, now that Olmert has admitted the invasion was all about Israel, the corporate media has kicked into overdrive to make excuses. “Under Saddam, Iraq backed Palestinian militants and posed a menacing presence to Israel’s east. During the 1991 Gulf war, Iraq rained missiles on Israel but Israel held its fire at the behest of Washington, which was wary of alienating Arab allies,” Reuters would have us believe.

Indeed, Palestinians attack Israel, and would do so with or without support from Saddam or any other self-serving Arab leader, an act of self-defense enshrined in the United Nations charter (Article 51), not that a besieged people, facing ethnic cleansing and slow genocide need to run to the United Nations for permission and legitimization. Moreover, the United Nations recognized the right of Iraq to provide assistance to the Palestinians during the General Assembly 20th session in 1965 when it invited “all States to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial territories.”

Ramzy Baroud writes:

The specified decision has always applied to the Palestinian people and their struggle for freedom. But again, intentional misinterpretation of that law compelled the passing of Resolution 3236, passed by the General Assembly in its 29th session in 1974. The resolution recognized that the collective rights of the Palestinian people were fully and properly recognized. The resolution recognized the Palestinian people’s right for self-determination in accordance with the United Nations Charter (which, in retrospect, gives them the same right of self-defense granted to sovereign states). In addition, it granted them the right of national independence, sovereignty and right of return to their homes. The resolution had further replaced the mere reference to Palestinians as “refugees” or “the refugee problem”, and made them a “principal party in the establishment of a just and durable peace in the Middle East.”

According to Olmert, the Israelis, Bush and the neocons, and no shortage of ill-informed Americans, the Palestinian “right for self-determination in accordance with the United Nations Charter” is nothing short of terrorism.

So pervasive is this notion, Israel arrogantly invades Beit Lahiya and the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza, not worried about international reaction, as impotent as that is. Israel confiscates Palestinian tax money. Continues to build illegal settlements populated by violent racists on private property. Israel “arrests” (i.e., abducts at gunpoint) the elected representatives of the Palestinians in Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Hebron, Jenin and East Jerusalem, and there is barely an international murmur. Palestinian politicians are subjected to the shabah, that is to say they are trussed like cattle, by Israel’s Shin Bet, and the world is basically none the wiser.

So arrogant are the Israelis, they figured it would be a cakewalk—as both neocons and crazed Israeli generals and politicians invariably believe invading Arab countries will be a cakewalk—to invade southern Lebanon and bomb Beirut with impunity, but then they got their arse beat something awful. Not that the disastrous invasion, complete with the deliberate targeting of civilians with a million cluster bombs (designed to prevent the return of over 200,000 Lebanese to their homes), is likely to put a dent in Israeli hubris.

In essence, Olmert was thanking his God for the murder of over 650,000 Iraqis and 3,000 American soldiers, although some believe these numbers are far higher. He didn’t bother to thank the American people, who are perennial chumps, cash cows, and never seem to complain about the war crimes committed in their names. Of course, even if Olmert did thank the American people, chances are fairly high they wouldn’t even notice, as they are tuned in to Barbara Walters’ coverage of the meaningless feud between Rosie O’Donnell and Kelly Ripa.

However, one day, and possibly sooner before later, the American people will be forced out of their navel-gazing slumber by six dollar a gallon gasoline prices, war in the Middle East, and a collapsing and worthless dollar.

Predictably, they will attempt to affix blame elsewhere, as they invariably do, but this may not wash with the rest of the world, as much of it understands all too well that the foreign policy of the United States, controlled by AIPAC and the neocons, as Olmert now admits, is the reason for so much misery."